Mohammad Reza Aref

Mohammad Reza Aref (19 December 1951-) was First Vice-President of Iran from 11 September 2001 to 11 September 2005, succeeding Hassan Habibi and preceding Parviz Davoodi. Aref served under President Mohammad Khatami, and he became the leader of the Pervasive Coalition of Reformists list in 2016.

Biography
Mohammad Reza Aref was born in Yazd, Iran on 19 December 1951, the son of a businessman. He received a degree in electronics from the University of Tehran, and he studied at Stanford University in the United States, graduating in 1980. While he was a student in Tehran, he led many protests during the Iranian Revolution and was repeatedly arrested by SAVAK, and he entered politics after the revolution. From 1983 to 1994, he taught at the Isfahan University of Technology, and he became chancellor of the University of Tehran in 1994. He became Minister of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone under President Mohammad Khatami, and he was chosen as Khatami's Vice-President after Hassan Habibi's resignation. Aref would become a popular reformist leader, and he led the Pervasive Coalition of Reformists electoral list in 2016. Aref claimed that he was committed to preserving the ideals of the Iranian Revolution through reformism, and he was elected to parliament on 28 May 2016 as a representative from Tehran.